


Twenty-two Portraits from a Cakecroft Tarot

by Silvertounged



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack, Gen, I'm Sorry, but crack all the same, cakecroft is my otp, hilarious crack, pure unadulterated crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 21:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvertounged/pseuds/Silvertounged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and Lestrade try to deal with John and Mycroft's spiraling respective addictions to jam and cake. I told you it was crack. Inspired by an omegle rp I had on the same themes. Twenty-two entries, five or six per chapter, styled after the major arcana in a tarot deck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Fool - The Emperor

THE FOOL

It was just a taste. A sliver so thin he could practically see through it. Besides, it was banana bread. Bread isn’t cake. So he took out the sharpest knife in the office kitchen drawer and carved off a section, the mashed bananas were beautifully marbling under the crust. He took a bite and moaned, passion fruit glaze. He hadn’t even seen that, but it was so good. It cut through the sweet, almost sticky, quality of the batter and left the slightest of aftertastes in his mouth, just enough to remind him all the way through his meeting with the prime minister. Anthea served tea and peppermint slices during the meeting, Mycroft had to have two just to get the memory of that cake out of his head.

THE MAGICIAN

Fruit, sugar, pectin, water. John read the ingredients list and sighed. Sherlock had sent him to Newcastle to pick up a shirt he had ordered online. Apparently, he couldn’t have it shipped like any other normal person. The train station was dull, but it offered much in the way of tacky “British” souvenirs. The jar was heart shaped, the glass gently flaring out like a woman’s hips. She was capped in silver, a mark of distinction. John picked up a commemorative teaspoon with the local football club’s colours decorating it and took both items to the counter. The cool glass was starting to warm under his fingertips. The checkout girl didn’t even look up and John paid in cash. He walked to his platform as quickly as he thought nonchalant, the condemning receipt wrapping itself around the plastic casing of the spoon and the jam jar making a distinguished shape against the plastic bag. He had to wait until the train was in motion before slipping off to the bathroom and perching himself on the counter. The pop of the lid seemed to make ripples in the air. He dipped the spoon in first, not picking any up, and licked the thin film from the metal. Pineapple.  
“Oh Hartley, you genius,” he mumbled before dipping his spoon back in.

THE HIGH PREISTESS

Sherly was sulking because Mycroft got the bowl. They both stood on stools while Mum showed them how to weigh the eggs first then match their weight in butter, sugar, and flour. Then they would argue about what flavorings to put in. Sherly would always win, but he was always right. The batter was always ladled into sandwich tins, one ladle by Mum, one ladle by Mycroft. Sherly licked the spoon. Mum would lift them down from their perches one at a time so they could watch as she slid the cakes into the oven. They would play cards while she did the washing up – though Mycroft always licked the bowl clean – only to scatter them everywhere when the timer went off. It was torture waiting for it to cool. When the last tendril of steam had released from the sponge the brothers would run through the house pull Mum back into the kitchen. The frosting argument would occur. Mycroft was allowed to win that one. Then Mum would pour them milk or Ribena and cut them a slab for afternoon tea. Mycroft always finished Sherly’s, and Mum always laughed.

THE EMPRESS

Irene Adler just smiled.  
“I can see what you like,” she cooed, picking up a tart. Her tongue flipped the decorative pastry star atop the treat and delved into the deep red below.  
The Queen of Hearts indeed.

THE EMPEROR

“Mycroft, sort out your brother,” Lestrade said over his teacup.  
“Whatever do you mean?”  
“He keeps teasing me about the… crumbs…”  
“Really? I’ve seen sticky patches behind his ears. Perhaps he should simply shut up,” Mycroft snarked and reached for a Madeline.  
“That’s your third,” Greg observed, blushing at the implication of 221b’s hijinks.  
“My diet is going just fine.”  
“No more red velvet in the bedroom. Agreed?”  
Mycroft sneered momentarily then nodded, “on weekdays.”


	2. The Hierophant - The Wheel of Fortune

THE HIEROPHANT

The sniper sits in the tower and just watches. At first, he lines up the shot, puts his finger on the trigger, and slowly starts to contract his finger. Then he sees the look on his face and the glint of glass where the streetlight reveals what he has tried to conceal. He lowers his weapon and raises his phone.

It’s worse to let him live. – SM

THE LOVERS

Between the press of lips were two smears of pink. Her lipstick and the strawberry frosting they shared. She whispered his name and without thinking he said, “angel.” It slipped through unnoticed, but in the morning, he left a note pinned to the remains of the air light cake.

THE CHARIOT

They say jam is a gateway spread. John wrapped his arms around himself to keep out the cold emanating from the direction of the fridge. Mrs Hudson made them marmalade. Fucking kumquat marmalade. He had a teaspoon on his morning toast and another round just before bed. He searched through the mint of his toothpaste for a trapped bit of rind but hit nothing. Sherlock reached out in his sleep to put a hand on John’s arm. John bit his lip and rode out the cravings until dawn.

In the morning, Sherlock woke to find John had made them breakfast in bed. Sherlock smiled and traced the dark circles under John’s eyes, “if you need more sleep I am capable of feeding myself.” His eyes flickered down to the tray.  
John poured them both tea and climbed back in beside the consulting detective.  
“What is it?” he asked as Sherlock scowled down at the offerings.  
“Mrs Hudson’s marmalade. She makes it too sweet.”  
“If you don’t like it I’ll throw it away later,” John said with relief, now having an explanation for the large missing portion. Sherlock smiled and pulled the untainted crusts from his slices. The marmalade no longer tasted so good to John.

STRENGTH

“Custard twist, Mr Holmes?”  
“No thank you, Anthea.”  
“Lox bagel?”  
“No thank you, Anthea.”  
“Apfelkuchen?” Mycroft pauses and steeples his fingers. He has been awful good lately. Anthea pours him tea while he deliberates. On the desk in front of him, his phone is lined up with his fountain pen and the prime minister’s proposal. The screen lights up suddenly and Mycroft picks it up, smiling as he sees Greg’s name at the end of the message. He replies with the name of the restaurant he has picked for the evening and what he has planned for afterwards when Anthea reminds him of her presence.  
“Mr Holmes?” she holds the tongs over a pain au chocolat.  
“N-no thank you, Anthea.”

THE HERMIT 

Long ago, a lifetime it seems, John went to see his sister. She had yelled at him through the door to go away, and screamed and threatened when John broke down the door, then slipped and sliced her hand open on some broken glass. She hadn’t left the house in days. She cried as John pulled the shards of glass from her hand at the kitchen table. She explained later that it wasn’t the bloodshed that was hurting her.

THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE 

It’s like waiting for a death sentence. Sherlock and Lestrade sat in the park together, holding cups of coffee they are not inclined to drink.  
“But you must understand Sherlock, after your…” Lestrade trails off, not sure how to consolidate frequent cocaine use with baked goods abuse.   
“Yes,” Sherlock admits, “it’s not impossible though. You just have to make it appeal to Mycroft’s vanity.” And yet, Sherlock’s palm presses against the crook of his elbow, and his pulse jumps and he craves the rush of a needle under his skin once more.  
“Any interesting cases?” he asks Lestrade, smoothing his composure and breathing deeply.


	3. Justice - The Devil

JUSTICE 

Mycroft isn’t a great believer in poetics. Sometimes Greg will play him his favourite songs, and request that Mycroft just listens to the lyrics, but he never understood it much. 

But when Greg’s not there, and he’s surrounded by the remains of his latest frosting bender, and there is powdered sugar in his hair, he sits in the middle of the room listening to Greg’s playlists, and he finds himself crying.

THE HANGED MAN 

They were condemned souls. John had shown Mycroft that a Victoria sponge isn’t really a Victoria sponge without a smear of raspberry jam and Mycroft had shown John how a butterfly cake is the perfect carrier for a couple of spoons of his favourite conserves. 

Fueling each other.

And when they were done they would look at themselves guiltily, self portraits of despair in cable knits and three piece suits, and they would realize they are the same, and they were sorry. But they wiped the crumbs from the corners of their mouths and went out into the world.

DEATH

The only touch of colour was Sherlock’s scarf. He had refused to leave the house without it, as inappropriate for the occasion as Mycroft tried to tell him it was. Even the landscape was grey, the rain a sheet of iron and the ivy glazed black.

“No,” he said over and over, as if he was not just defying Mycroft, but the fact their mother was dead and they were on their way to bury her. Mycroft made him sit down for breakfast, even made her recipe for pancakes, but Sherlock only pushed his around.  
“They’ve moved the cows to a different field,” he said once, “the butter is a different texture than it used to be.” Mycroft smiled and let Sherlock leave the table, not mentioning the way he ran his fingers over the tight, worn, knit of the scarf mummy had made him before he moved to London.

Mycroft provided his brother shelter from the rain by sharing his umbrella, but Sherlock seemed not to notice.  
“We asked for tea roses, they’ve given her English garden,” he said quietly, not intending for anyone to hear, probably not even Mycroft.  
“Don’t make a scene, you know how it would upset her,” Mycroft whispered.  
“I’m not the one who upset her, Mycroft,” Sherlock spat, and turned away from the grave. Without the cover of the umbrella, his curls were plastered to his scalp in seconds, and the soft blue of his scarf was indistinguishable from the black of his coat. Mycroft bit at the skin around his fingernails, a habit he had thought broken, and tasted the faint sweetness of leftover maple syrup, before he bit too hard and the copper tang of blood filled his mouth.

TEMPERANCE

In all things, there must be a balance.   
Day and night, summer and winter, savoury and sweet.   
Nothing hangs in the balance so much as balance itself.   
It’s easily upset.   
Broken scales are never really accurate ever again.

THE DEVIL

Mycroft reviewed the case at his desk. It should have been infallible, James Moriarty should have been brought to public justice, but there would be no fun in that. Besides, if the verdict had come through guilty, there was always Sebastian Moran to contend with. Nobody was even sure what he looked like, or where he was, or whether he was more than Moriarty’s employee. They did know he was very proficient at killing.

He rested his forehead on his hands while Anthea announced he had a delivery from GL. Mycroft dismisses her before reading the card.

Sorry things didn’t work out. I’ll make up for it later.

The shiny white card of the box is opened to reveal half a dozen cupcakes from his favourite bakery. The green frosting denotes they are absinthe flavored, and very forbidden. He unwraps one of the morsels and bites into it, chewing slowly as he rereads the card. It isn’t Greg’s printing, but he assumes he phoned through the order. As he takes another mouthful, he pushes the box across desk and notes the frosting is a little bitterer than he remembers. A ring of red pen calls his attention to something in Moriarty’s folder. A scrawl of Sherlock’s name, repeated over and over, but something about the shape of the letters is disconcerting. He takes a third bite as he turns the sample right way up. He gags and spits out the mouthful of cake he had been enjoying. The flourish on the capital ‘S’ was unmistakable.  
“Anthea!” he shouts, his hands beginning to shake.


	4. The Tower - The World

THE TOWER 

It is a long fall from grace; few survive to tell the tale.

THE STAR

Stars don’t actually glimmer. They’re constantly burning, but their light is sometimes buffeted away by solar winds. And yet we think that makes them more beautiful.

Greg thought the same of the heart rate monitor attached to Mycroft. Each peak was hope; each rise in the chart was a sign that things might get better. He had waited a long time for Mycroft to wake up. He couldn’t let himself sleep until he did.

THE MOON

The city is filled with tall buildings, and John has never really noticed them before. Now they look like tombstones. Jim Moriarty and Sebastian Moran still lurk around any corner, a charming wolf and a military dog, both howling for blood. John is tempted to spill some.

THE SUN

He was diagnosed as pre-diabetic. He had to stop. Anthea kept sweet things out of the office, Greg kept them out of the home. Sometimes he could taste traces of sugar on Greg’s lips, but he would bite his own until all he tasted was blood. His nails became ragged again, torn to the quick. It helped.

JUDGEMENT

Jim Moriarty was deliberate in every action he made. Nothing was left to chance. Nothing was decided on a whim. Sebastian watched as he melted sugar and constructed dioxin carriers that would leave them unaffected, but not the intended victim. It was a slow death, and a natural looking one, and one of Moriarty’s favourites. Any food could be used as a gateway. He wasn’t a talented cook, but he could follow any recipe. He was a bomber, after all. He would sing softly as he stirred and whipped and planned.

Sebastian cleaned his weapons and let a cigarette burn down to the filter.

He delivered the produce the next day with faked notes of good fortune attached.

THE WORLD

In the end, it doesn’t really matter. All things are cyclic. Just as Mycroft would stay clean, then binge, and then come clean again, John would have a repertoire of flavours to alternate between.  
It was a life. It worked. Wheels continued to turn, and cases were still solved. None of them particularly liked it, but none of them were particularly inclined to change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and maybe someday I'll write actual fic.


End file.
